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German FM Open to UK’s Taurus Swap Proposal as ‘Option’

By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 11.03.2024

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has repeatedly opposed the idea of supplying Ukraine with missiles capable of striking deep into Russian territory. However, recently UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron expressed London’s readiness to assist Berlin in overcoming any obstacles preventing the delivery of Taurus long-range missiles to the Kiev regime.

Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is open to her British colleague David Cameron’s suggestion of a swap of long-range cruise missiles for their further transfer to Ukraine, Der Spiegel reported.

In particular, Germany could supply Taurus cruise missiles to the United Kingdom, and in return the British side would transfer Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine. Thus, Berlin would formally be relieved of responsibility for providing cruise missiles to the Kiev regime, the outlet stated.

“That would be an option,” Baerbock was quoted as saying regarding the proposed exchange on ARD’s program Caren Miosga.

The German minister on Sunday pointed out that exchanges of a similar nature had already taken place with respect to other material. This, according to the outlet, was a nod at Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s previous use of indirect military aid to Ukraine, when he was reluctant to send Leopard 2 main battle tanks to the conflict zone. In January, 2023, Berlin announced it would send its Leopard 2A6 main battle tanks to Ukraine, also agreeing to provide re-export licenses for other countries wanting to supply these German-made armored vehicles. Within weeks of their arrival on the battlefield, Russian forces began hunting the tanks down with missiles and kamikaze drones.

UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron recently came up with a potential way to persuade Germany to supply Ukraine with Taurus missiles. During a recent interview with German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, he stated that London was ready to help Berlin solve problems preventing the delivery of the cruise missiles to Kiev, or consider the option of buying German missiles and then transferring British Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine. Cameron did not discount the possibility of imposing certain restrictions before supplying the weaponry to Kiev.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has repeatedly dismissed the idea of providing Ukraine with missiles capable of striking deep into Russian territory, as such support would come dangerously close to direct German participation in the conflict.

If the swap scheme of Britain procuring Taurus missiles from Germany in exchange for supplying Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine comes to pass, Kiev would likely get the long-range missiles eventually, pundits told Sputnik.

The issue of Taurus transfers made the headlines in the wake of a leaked conversation between German military officials discussing a potential attack on the Crimea Bridge.

On March 1, Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT and Rossiya Segodnya, Sputnik’s parent media group, published the text of a conversation involving four Bundeswehr representatives discussing a potential attack on the Crimean Bridge with Taurus missiles. The talk, which took place on February 19, involved Inspector of the German Air Force Ingo Gerhartz, Brig. Gen. Frank Graefe, head of the Operations and Exercises Department at the Air Force Command in Berlin, and two employees of the air operations center of the Bundeswehr Space Command.

After the intercepted war talk, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz once again ruled out supplying the missiles to Ukraine since it could require the presence of German troops on the ground to help deploy them. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said that long-range Taurus missiles would not be decisive for the conflict in Ukraine and would only help in certain areas, but that Germany does not intend to cross this line.

“We have always emphasized that such long-range missiles will not solve this [crisis],” Pistorius said at a joint press conference with Finnish Defense Minister Antti Hakkanen.

The Kremlin reiterated that the contents of leaked conversations between German officials proved “the direct involvement of the collective West in the conflict in Ukraine.”

In the wake of Ukraine’s bungled counteroffensive, the Zelensky regime has been pressing Germany for the delivery of the missiles, which have a range of 500 kilometers (311 miles) and could strike deep inside Russian territory.

Moscow has repeatedly underscored that Western arms shipments to Kiev and the training of Ukrainian servicemen only prolong the conflict and will be unable to alter the situation at the battlefield.

March 11, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Polish embassy in US calls warning by Polish-US communities not to engage in ‘unwinnable’ Ukraine war the ‘Kremlin’s rhetoric’

POLSATNEWS | March 11, 2024

Representatives from several Polish-American communities in the United States have sent a letter to the president and prime minister of Poland ahead of their joint visit to the White House, in which they opposed the “deeper involvement of Poland in the war” in Ukraine.

The letter to Prime Minister Donald Tusk and President Andrzej Duda expressed communities’ “firm opposition” to Poland’s further involvement in the conflict and urged Warsaw not to engage in an unwinnable war.

The authors appealed for NATO to remain a defensive alliance, not a “tool for fulfilling the geopolitical ambitions of its dominant members.” They argued that “Poland should not be drawn into or forced into military engagement beyond its borders unless it is first attacked.”

The strong stance against Polish involvement in Ukraine prompted a significant response from the Polish embassy in Washington.

“We are concerned about the content and tone of statements reflecting the Kremlin’s rhetoric,” stated Poland’s Ambassador to the U.S. Marek Magierowski.

The embassy emphasized that “the only way to ensure a peaceful future for Europe and the transatlantic community is by ensuring Russia’s strategic defeat in its war.”

Furthermore, the Polish diaspora was urged to “advocate for our interests, which include further assistance for Ukraine in its defense against Russian aggression.” The embassy also expressed gratitude for the contributions of millions of Poles towards Poland’s integration with NATO.

Andrzej Duda and Donald Tusk are due to visit Washington on March 12.

March 11, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Trump has plan to end Ukraine conflict – Orban

RT | March 11, 2024

Donald Trump intends to end the Ukraine conflict, if reelected as US president, and has a “detailed plan” to do so, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told local media, after meeting the presumed Republican nominee.

The former US leader repeatedly claimed on his campaign trail that, if he had remained in the White House for a second term, there would be no hostilities between Moscow and Kiev. If voted back in, he promises to end the conflict “in 24 hours” by applying pressure on stakeholders.

Orban, who spoke with Trump at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Friday, did not explain how exactly the American would do that, but said that cutting the flow of US aid was a crucial part of the plan.

”If the US will not provide the money, Europeans on their own will not be able to finance this war, and then the war will end,” Orban said in an interview with M1 broadcaster on Sunday.

During his presidency, Trump had shown himself to be “a man of peace,” the Hungarian leader claimed. That stance puts him in alignment with Hungary, unlike the administration of US President Joe Biden and many members of the EU, he added.

”The American Democratic government and the leadership of the EU, as well as the leadership of the largest EU member states are pro-war governments. Donald Trump is pro-peace, Hungary is pro-peace. At the bottom of everything lies this difference,” Orban declared.

The Kremlin declined to weigh in on the remarks, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying on Monday that Orban’s account of Trump’s intentions was too vague for any specific commentary.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky previously expressed skepticism about Trump’s ability to deliver on the promise. He said if the plan was feasible, the American politician should share it with the public, or at least with Kiev. The Ukrainian government claims that a “just peace” requires a military victory over Russia and that it would agree to nothing short of that.

Moscow has said that its strategic goals in the military operation against Kiev will be achieved one way or another. The US and its allies, who continue to arm Ukraine, cannot change that outcome and are only prolonging the suffering of the country’s people, Russian officials have stated.

March 11, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Missiles near Russia, F-35s with thermonuclear bombs… Is NATO ready for war?

By Drago Bosnic | March 11, 2024

NATO’s never-ending encroachment on Russia’s borders is breaking world records in mere days. Just last week, a new major airbase was opened in Albania, despite the fact that Tirana effectively has no air force. NATO was also given full exterritoriality rights, meaning that Albania officially gave up on its already highly dubious “sovereignty”. Deployment of major ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) and strike platforms in the area can certainly bolster the belligerent alliance’s highly destabilizing presence in both Southeastern and Eastern Europe. And yet, this is not enough. Namely, on March 7, Lithuanian Defense Minister Arvydas Anusauskas confirmed that NATO would also station “Patriot” SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems in his country. While Lithuania doesn’t border mainland Russia, it has an extensive border with Belarus and Moscow’s Kaliningrad oblast (region).

“This year, the rotational air defense system will finally become operational, at least partially,” Anusauskas stated at a press conference in Vilnius, adding: “Our goal is to have a rotation similar to the air policing mission… This principle would not be a one-off thing for several months but would cover all of our calendar months and significantly increase our air defense capabilities.”

While the “Patriot” has been intentionally overhyped by the mainstream propaganda machine, particularly with laughable claims of shooting down “half of the Russian Aerospace Forces in a week”, the move can certainly be considered highly destabilizing. It’s not yet clear how many of these systems could be deployed, but given the much smaller distances that it needs to cover than in Ukraine, deploying the “Patriot” in any of the Baltic states can certainly be more consequential. Namely, the detection range of its AN/MPQ-65 radar (officially 150 km) could provide coverage into the airspace of both Belarus and the Kaliningrad oblast. In addition, Finland is acquiring similar, albeit more advanced air defense assets, including the Israeli “David’s Sling”, which has a significantly longer maximum engagement range. Amassing such SAM systems so close to Russia’s northwest is deeply destabilizing and antagonistic.

While other NATO member states in the relative vicinity of Russia’s borders also operate “Patriot” SAM systems, most notably Romania and (soon) Poland, both of these are far enough not to make the air defense system a strategic issue. On the other hand, other much longer-range weapons, such as the “Aegis Ashore” ABM (anti-ballistic missile) systems, are set to become fully operational in Poland in 2024, while another is already active in Romania (since at least 2016). It’s part of the wider ship-borne “Aegis” system that provides a level of strategic depth that neither the “Patriot” nor “David’s Sling” could. And while the system’s capabilities and effectiveness are certainly up for debate (particularly against Russian hypersonic missiles), the massive increase in their presence is of quantitative importance, which could at least partially ameliorate their qualitative shortcomings and other deficiencies.

And yet, this certainly isn’t the end of NATO’s highly destabilizing activities in Europe. Namely, its vassals and satellite states such as Finland are acquiring the F-35s, while also making it possible to accommodate other jets of the same type from the United States and other NATO member states. The forward presence of USAF F-35s in Eastern and Central Europe keeps expanding and getting ever closer to Russia. Apart from Finland, it now includes Germany, Czechia and Poland, while the Dutch, Belgian and Italian F-35s will also be forward deployed to the area around the Baltic Sea. Worse yet, the jet has been certified to carry thermonuclear weapons, specifically the B61-12 bomb, with several NATO members having the ability to use them through nuclear sharing agreements with the US. This includes the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Italy, all of whom either operate F-35s or have them on order.

Namely, on March 9, the F-35 was confirmed to be certified to carry B61-12 thermonuclear gravity bombs. Although this refers only to the conventional F-35A, with F-35B and F-35C variants still lacking such capabilities, the latter two are deployed in much smaller numbers. The conventional F-35A is the most common version used by the USAF and other NATO air forces. The possibility of their large-scale deployment in Finland and the Baltic states gives the US premier strike capabilities, far greater than Russia ever had in Cuba 60 years ago.

What’s more, both high-ranking officials in Moscow and independent experts regularly warn about the development of new thermonuclear weapons in America, including the so-called “nuclear super-fuse” technology that the US has been testing for decades, particularly under the Obama administration. Investigative historian Eric Zuesse wrote extensively on the topic.

He has repeatedly been warning that the sole purpose of this controversial technology is to exponentially amplify the effectiveness of America’s first-strike capabilities. And while some might discard Zuesse’s warnings and even decry them as “doom and gloom fantasy” or the mythical “Russian disinformation”, recent developments only reinforce his already sound hypothesis. What’s more, NATO is directly involved in these plans. Back in October last year, the belligerent alliance concluded the “Steadfast Noon” nuclear exercise involving approximately 60 aircraft, including nuclear-capable F-16s and B-52 strategic bombers simulating strikes with B61-12 bombs. It should be noted that these bombs will also be augmented by the upcoming B61-13 variant. And although the nature of this upgrade is classified, it’s safe to assume that they will also include the aforementioned “nuclear super-fuse” technology.

The Pentagon already announced that these new thermonuclear bombs will be comparable to the B61-7 version that can have a yield of up to 340 kt (roughly equivalent to 22-23 Hiroshima bombs). Faced with such escalation, Russia doesn’t exactly have a lot of choice but to be prepared. This is precisely why Russia has been conducting nationwide drills simulating an all-out nuclear attack, as well as its own retaliatory strikes on the aggressors. Earlier, the US FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) conducted similar warning exercises.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

March 11, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

How NATO Helped Trigger the War in Ukraine and Then Did Nothing to Foil It

By Leo Ensel | In Depth News | January 18, 2024

Two years ago, in December 2021, Russia formulated its security interests in separate letters to NATO’s Secretary General Stoltenberg and to US President Biden in no uncertain terms. The West’s reaction: no response! There is much to suggest that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could have been prevented if the West had negotiated and ruled out the country’s membership of NATO, writes Dr Ensel.

OLDENBURG, Germany | 18 January 2024 (IDN) — Western reporting about the war in Ukraine has many remarkable blank spots about the events that led to the war. Hardly anybody in the West knows that Boris Yeltsin, who was otherwise very close to the West, threatened back in March 1997 the then US President Bill Clinton that if Ukraine joined NATO, it would cross a red line for Russia. This was at the time of NATO’s first eastward expansion and long before Vladimir Putin came to power. It shows that Western plans for NATO expansion into Ukraine dated back to the 1990’s and that Russia had vehemently opposed this for just as long.

The Minsk II agreement was, with the obvious acquiescence of the West, never implemented by the Ukrainian government. The constitutional reforms agreed on in Minsk to provide the Donetsk and Luhansk regions with a special status (like the South Tyrol solution) were ignored by the end of 2015. At the end of 2022, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel confirmed what ‘evil tongues’ had long suspected: The two Minsk Agreements were only to gain time to get the Ukrainian army in shape. Later, France’s former President François Hollande and Ukraine’s former President Petro Poroshenko confirmed this.

It is also little known in the West that in 2021—long before the Russian invasion—Ukraine intensified its attacks against rebel positions in Donetsk with Turkish Bayraktar TB2 combat drones that had “proven their worth in the Karabakh War 2020”. It was also negotiating with Turkey a license to produce them in Ukraine.

Virtually unknown among the Western public is also the fact that since mid-1990, the US armed forces conducted annual military manoeuvres with Ukrainian troops inside the territory of western Ukraine under the code name “Rapid Trident” (formerly named “Peace Shield”). The last US-Ukrainian manoeuvres took place in September -October 2021, together with forces from Bulgaria, Canada, Georgia, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Jordan, Moldova, Pakistan, and Poland. Since 1997, US naval manoeuvres code-named “Sea Breeze” have regularly taken place off the coast of Ukraine in the Black Sea. In the summer of 2021, these naval manoeuvres involved naval forces from 32 countries.

What would have been the reaction of the West if Russia, together with soldiers from Belarus, Serbia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and other countries, had conducted regular military exercises in Mexico and held annual naval maneuvers in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida?

Who knows that on March 24, 2021—exactly eleven months before the Russian invasion—Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed Decree No. 117 for a “Strategy for the de-occupation and reintegration of the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol”? It aimed to prepare all necessary military measures to “end the temporary occupation” of Crimea and the Donbas.

On August 30, 2021, the USA and Ukraine signed a treaty on military cooperation and, on November 10, 2021, concluded a treaty on “Strategic Partnership”. This treaty stated, among other things: “The United States intends to support Ukraine’s efforts to counter Russia’s armed aggression, including through the maintenance of sanctions and the application of other relevant measures, pending the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders.” Had the Ukraine, with US encouragement, prepared for war just months before Russia attacked?

And this was not all:

All this took place on the background of other activities that Russia must have seen as existential threats to its security. In 1999 and 2004, NATO expansion brought it directly to the Russian border when 14 Eastern European countries joined the military organization.

By 2001, the US Government under Bush Jr. began dismantling virtually all arms reduction treaties and confidence-building measures with Russia: In 2001, it cancelled the A-CFE Agreement on the Disarmament of Armed Forces and Weapons Systems in Europe and the ABM Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems; in 2019, it allowed the phasing out of INF Treaty prohibiting the production and deployment of land-based missiles and cruise missiles with a range of between 500 and 5.500 kilometres and in 2020 it cancelled the Open Skies Treaty, which was intended to create a ‘glasnost’ for both sides in the sense of confidence-building measures through overflight rights. In 2023, Russia responded by suspending the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the last remaining treaty limiting U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals. The US had never ratified the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

NATO conducted its own wars of aggression, ignoring the UN Charter. In 1999, it attacked illegally the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and was forced to hand control of Kosovo, formally an autonomous province of Yugoslavia, to NATO forces. In 2003, the US attacked Iraq under false pretext and without a UN mandate. In 2011, it attacked Libya, also under false pretext, ignoring the limitations set in the UN mandate. In a highly “creative” interpretation of the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act on Mutual Relations, it began to station NATO troops in countries bordering Russia in 2016. In 2016, the US Aegis Ashore Site became operational in Romania, and in 2023, the US Aegis Ashore Site in Poland became operational. They are all directed against Russia and designed to undermine Russia’s ability to respond to any nuclear attack.

What Russia proposed to NATO and the USA…

On December 17, 2021, Russia sent NATO and the USA a draft treaty to establish legally binding security guarantees for both sides. Are the proposals so absurd and unrealistic as claimed by the US and other NATO states? Was the West justified in ignoring Russia’s security concerns and in taking the position that “Ukraine’s NATO membership is not up for negotiations”? Had NATO fulfilled its obligation under the UN Charter to negotiate any conflict to find a diplomatic solution as and when it arises to prevent war?

In summary, the draft treaty addressed to NATO contained the following proposals:

  • Both sides should confirm not to regard each other as adversaries;
  • Return to the principles of “equal and indivisible security” (Paris Charter);
  • Renunciation of the use and threat of force;
  • Refraining from creating situations that one side could regard as a threat to its national security;
  • Restraint in military planning and exercises to avoid “dangerous brinkmanship”, especially in the Baltic Sea region and in the Black Sea;
  • Revitalization of the NATO-Russia Council and other bilateral and multilateral discussion formats;
  • Transparency in military exercises and manoeuvres;
  • Establishment of hotlines for emergency contacts (revitalization of the “red telephone”);
  • Withdrawal of Western armed forces and weapons systems to the level prior to NATO’s first eastward expansion;
  • No deployment of land-based short- and medium-range missiles in areas from which they could attack the territory of the other party;
  • No further expansion of NATO (in particular not to include Ukraine);
  • NATO to refrain from military activities on the territory of Ukraine and other states in Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia;
  • Establishment of a largely demilitarized corridor between NATO and Russia.

In summary, the draft treaty addressed to the USA also contained the following proposals:

  • Reaffirmation of the declaration that nuclear war can have no victor and that every effort must be made to avert this danger;
  • Renunciation of measures aimed at preparing for war against the other side on the territory of third countries;
  • Renunciation by the USA of establishing military bases and bilateral military cooperation in and with the states of the post-Soviet space that are not NATO members;
  • Both sides refrain from stationing armed forces and weapons systems outside their territories, which the other side might regard as a threat to its national security;
  • Refraining from flights of heavy bombers and the presence of surface combatants in regions from which they could strike targets in the territory of the other Party;
  • Refraining from stationing nuclear weapons outside its own territory and returning such weapons systems, and destroying the corresponding infrastructure to third countries;
  • There is no training of personnel in the use of nuclear weapons and no military exercises for their use in countries that do not possess them.

As always, the devil is in the details, and all proposals would have required intensive scrutiny by security policy and diplomatic experts. Moreover, the ‘package demands’ and the ultimate tone of the two letters were highly undiplomatic. Nonetheless, NATO and the USA should have taken the two proposed draft agreements seriously as a clear formulation of Russian security interests, examined them carefully and used them as a basis for negotiations aimed at significantly improving the security situation of all signatory states by finding a negotiated solution to the security concerns of Russia and Ukraine. This would have probably prevented the war, saved the lives and health of hundreds of thousands of mostly young men, and left Ukraine as a sovereign state intact.

… and how NATO responded

On January 7, 2022, an extraordinary digital conference call among all 30 NATO foreign ministers took place to work out a common NATO position on how to react to the Russian proposals. NATO’s response was disappointing: They decided not to negotiate any of the core issues raised by Russia.

At the subsequent press conference, Secretary General Stoltenberg—like US President Biden later—responded in the usual fashion: NATO would continue to support Ukraine and Georgia; and that every country, regardless of its size and the concern of its neighbours, had the right to choose its own alliances. However, by claiming that every member of the OSCE, regardless of its neighbours, has the right to become a NATO member, Stoltenberg and Biden contradicted the spirit of the 1990 OSCE “Charter of Paris” for a New Europe and the Istanbul Document of the 1999 OSCE Summit with its stated principles: “Each participating State has an equal right to security… They will not strengthen their security at the expense of the security of other States.”

Gabriele Krone-Schmalz, the former and well-informed ARD correspondent in Moscow, responding to such a claim, said the necessary things about the alleged general right to NATO membership: “All states have the right to apply to NATO for membership. But NATO has every right in the world to reject applicants if overriding political considerations speak against it!”

Adding further to the tensions, Stoltenberg took this opportunity to call on Finland and Sweden to join NATO blatantly—“the partners with whom we are working more and more closely. NATO’s door remains open!”

Six weeks later, Russia launched its military intervention into Ukraine.

Dr. Leo Ensel (“Look at the other side!”) is a conflict researcher and intercultural trainer focusing on the post-Soviet space and Central/Eastern Europe. He has published about “Fear and Nuclear Armament”, the social psychology of German reunification and studies on images of Germany in the post-Soviet space. In the new West-East conflict, his main concern is overcoming false narratives, de-escalation and the reconstruction of trust. The author attaches great importance to his independence. He feels exclusively committed to the topics mentioned and not to any national narrative.

March 10, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

SENATOR RAND PAUL: EXPOSING THE COVID COVER-UP

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | March 10, 2024

Del sits down with one of Anthony Fauci’s biggest adversaries, Senator Rand Paul. Hear how his perspective as a physician and politician led to holding Fauci to the fire on his cover-up of gain-of-function research, his push for draconian lockdowns, and refusal to accept the strength of natural immunity against COVID. His new book, Deception: The Great Covid Cover-Up, reads as a forensic investigation, chronicling the disastrous failure of government and public health during the pandemic.

March 10, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Fearful Electioneering Turbo Charges Western Warmongering

Strategic Culture Foundation | March 8, 2024

Western states are facing an acute political crisis whereby their established governing parties and leaders are fighting for survival amid a grave loss in legitimacy in the eyes of their electorates.

In the United States, incumbent President Joe Biden is vying for reelection in November with historically lowest poll numbers ever for an occupant of the White House.

Meanwhile, across the European Union, governing parties and leaders are braced for a drubbing from parliamentary elections in June.

The roots of this unprecedented loss of legitimacy among Western political establishments are manifold. But surely one cause is the rank hypocrisy of Western leaders that has now been laid bare. How can political figures expect to have any moral authority when they are seen to be inveterate liars and shamelessly corrupt?

Western governments and their servile media lecture about “democracy”, “human rights” and upholding “law and order”. They claim to be motivated by such principles in their support of Ukraine against alleged Russian aggression. Yet these same governments are complicit in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza through their unwavering support for the Israeli regime.

Western leaders have been fatally exposed and compromised by the conflict in Ukraine and Gaza. The contradiction is terminal.

That’s not just because of the blatant double standards and duplicity. Western voters are increasingly disgusted by the relentless financial and military support funneled into Ukraine to prop up a scamming regime comprised of NeoNazi ideologues. Under Joe Biden and the incumbent European politicians, the West has flooded Ukraine with weapons and hundreds of billions of dollars in what is the biggest war racket ever.

This is while Western populations, workers, farmers, and businesses are hard-pressed with numerous social and economic burdens.

Western governing parties are rightly seen as elitist and serving powerful minority oligarchic interests such as the military-industrial-corporate-financial nexus. Their declared vows about democracy are a contemptible joke.

The war in Ukraine is increasingly understood by voters to be a disastrous proxy war of choice that was pushed by U.S. and Western imperial objectives to confront Russia.

Despite the squandering of public money to propagate the war, the U.S.-led NATO axis has lost its “great game”. The proxy war has devastated Ukraine, causing up to 500,000 military deaths in two years, as well as destabilizing the rest of Europe from increased migration, fiscal impact, deindustrialization, and the shattering of agricultural industries.

Western populations are furious with their political leaders for having inflicted such chaos and waste of resources – as well as wantonly provoking tensions in international relations with Russia. Western politicians have pushed the world to the brink of an all-out war between nuclear powers. All this crazed folly is based on utter lies and deception – as the horror of Gaza and Western complicity illustrates.

In this cauldron of electoral revolt, Western political leaders are only digging a deeper hole for their eventual collapse.

American President Joe Biden in his State of the Union address this week made a disingenuous pitch to voters. He portrayed the world as facing an existential crisis from Russian “tyranny” and simultaneously claimed the fate of US democracy was under threat from his election rival Donald Trump.

In a dangerous and desperate move, Biden is conflating Trump with alleged Russian aggression. The Democrat president is fighting for political survival against Republican presumptive nominee Trump primarily because Biden is so deeply unpopular among American citizens. To boost his election prospects, Biden is making out that the country is facing an “inflection point” that requires rejection of Trump because he is “bowing down” to Russia.

Trump and many within the Republican Party are opposed to continuing the proxy war in Ukraine, recognizing that it is futile.

Biden and the Democrats, who are more aligned with the U.S. foreign policy establishment, are therefore trying to make the election about an existential “defense of world democracy and peace”. Biden claimed in his State of the Union address that if the U.S. does not supply Ukraine with another $60 billion more in military aid then Russia will overrun the rest of Europe. Biden even invoked the memory of Roosevelt supposedly facing down Nazi Germany in 1941.

Meanwhile, in Europe, the same warmongering high-stakes ruse is being pushed by French President Emmanuel Macron. Macron is calling for the deployment of NATO ground troops in Ukraine to prevent a Russian victory and an alleged threat to the rest of Europe.

The French head of state has become almost hysterical in recent weeks with war talk. He told other French political leaders this week that there would be “no limits” to France’s support for Ukraine against Russia.

What’s lying behind Macron’s belligerent rhetoric are his fears of political defeat from opposition parties in the forthcoming EU parliamentary elections. It is not just Macron who is anxious. All incumbent European leaders are dreading an expected widespread revolt by the electorate.

That is why the French president and his ruling-class ilk like European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz are seeking to dominate the public narrative with war talk and the alleged danger of Russian expansionism.

The irony is that the more the Western establishments pursue militarism and war in Ukraine the worse their states become from economic mismanagement and the more their legitimacy sinks into the gutter. They are seen more and more as a warmongering clique that has not a shred of ethical concern because of their reckless warmongering in Ukraine and their despicable complicity in the genocide in Gaza.

Elections in Western states are over-rated. As the saying goes, if voting changed anything, it would have been banned years ago. The array of current opposition figures and parties facing incumbents is not going to deliver any solutions to the endemic problems of Western systemic failure. Nevertheless, the forthcoming U.S. presidential election and the European parliamentary ballots are shaping up to deliver grievous blows of repudiation to the political establishments.

To offset the political doomsday, charlatan Western leaders like Biden, Macron, Scholz, and Von der Leyen are doing their last-ditch best to talk up war with Russia and the “threat to democracy” as a way to burnish their electioneering efforts. But such cynicism is not turbocharging their prospects. It will backfire.

The U.S.-led NATO proxy war in Ukraine is facing a historic debacle from defeat. But that makes the desperate reaction by Western incumbents scurrying for political survival a dangerous time in the next few months.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

March 9, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What the Western Press Didn’t Say About the Leaked Luftwaffe Conversation

By Eduardo Vasco | Strategic Culture Foundation | March 8, 2024

On March 1, the editor-in-chief of the Rossiya Segodnya group, journalist Margarita Simonyan, revealed, on her Telegram channel, a 38-minute audio in which officers from the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) discussed the possibility of sending missiles long-range Taurus to Ukraine and whether they would be able to reach the Crimean bridge in the Kerch Strait, which connects the peninsula to the mainland and is Russian territory.

The Russian press, naturally, made much of the revelation. This forced the mainstream Western media – especially German ones – to report the leak. But whoever thought that a miracle would happen, that is, that the Western press would finally raise the issue of NATO’s military threats against Russia… well, those people are simply very naive.

The Western mass media, as always, tried to manipulate the news and hide the main issue.

The New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC, The Guardian, Die Welt and Der Spiegel published 39 articles on the topic on their respective websites between the time the news was revealed and the evening of March 6th (when I write these lines).

The two North American newspapers did not want to highlight the matter. The Post published two reports and the Times only one. The three expressed concern about the fragility of German intelligence security systems in the face of Russian espionage.

The Europeans, as has been the case for some time, carried much more propaganda against Russia. The BBC published four articles, all referring to the failure to protect Luftwaffe communications. The Guardian published five articles. The majority warns of the Germans’ failure and treats the Russians as great, threatening villains. However, it is necessary to make an honorable mention of Simon Jenkins’ column, the only one who was allowed to say that the leaked conversations demonstrate that NATO is threatening Russia with an escalation in the conflict.

As we all know, this drop of water in the middle of the ocean has no chance of counterbalancing the flood of war propaganda and fake news from the British press against Russia. Newspaper owners only allow freedom of expression when it is harmless – and try to isolate minimally independent opinions.

Now let’s talk about German newspaper coverage. Die Welt published 18 pieces about the leak scandal, and treated it as such. Of course, the main reason for the scandal was – for German war propagandists – the interception and dissemination of the conversation, not its content.

The entire reportage of Die Welt revolves around failures in the security system of the German armed forces and Russian espionage. The possibility of Olaf Scholz sending the Taurus to Zelensky is briefly discussed and it is even stated that Germany is putting its Western allies in danger by allowing the interception of conversations that may mention confidential and compromising information – such as the participation of British soldiers in Ukraine, as mentioned in the conversation in question.

A single Die Welt report presents a “dissident” opinion, which is not “Russian propaganda”: the brief speech of a member of the AfD – who, however, is branded a Russian agent by the German state and its agents, such as the press.

The article signed by Pavel Lokshin has the following title: “Kremlin is using Taurus leaks to threaten war against Germany”. Of course, it was the Russians who considered blowing up a bridge in German territory, right?

In turn, Der Spiegel, in its nine articles on the case, reproduces the same speech as Die Welt about the failures in German security and the danger of Russian espionage. It also disqualifies the Kremlin’s claims that the conversation is clear proof of NATO’s direct involvement in the war in Ukraine and how much this threatens Russian national security.

Christina Hebel’s analysis is the only piece in these two German outlets that takes the accusations of the Russian government and German involvement in the war more seriously, but it would be an exaggeration to say that this publication would be in the sphere of journalism.

In short, the coverage of these newspapers – and the coverage of other mass media outlets in the West is no different – is absolutely biased and manipulated. In fact, as always happens, they reverse roles: Germany, which threatened to blow up a bridge in Russia, is the victim, while Russia is the villain!

If at least one of these newspapers really were a journalistic tool, and not a propaganda tool, it should publish an article with a title like “German officers considered blowing up bridge in Russia” or “Audios reveal discussion of attack on Russia with German weapons”.

After all, which is more serious: the leak of the audio by Russian intelligence or the discussion among senior German officials about a military attack on Russia? No honest person would choose the first option. But we are not dealing with honest people when we talk about “journalism” in Europe and the United States.

I can’t help but wonder: what if it were the other way around? What if a conversation between Russian officials discussing the explosion of a bridge in Germany had been revealed? Would Western press coverage also treat the leak as something more serious than threats of military attack?

Of course not! If it were Russia considering attacking Germany, there would not be 39 articles in these vehicles, but rather 3,900. Russia would be portrayed as a threat to human civilization (more so than it is portrayed today), chaos would be wreaked in German and Western society, and the drums of war against Russia would be beaten at the top of their lungs. Meetings would be urgently called at the UN Security Council, unilateral sanctions would increase absurdly, all the lackey governments of the USA and the European Union would speak out publicly condemning Vladimir Putin’s madness.

They are real hypocrites. Against Russia, anything goes.

And, although the majority of these media outlets are private, they all act as government bodies, under the strict control of their respective States, as true spokespeople for those in power. But Russia is the one who controls the press, Russia is the one spreading propaganda and Russia is the one disinforming, right?

The leaked audio proves that the war in Ukraine is not a war between Russia and Ukraine, but rather a war between Russia and NATO. The Western press strengthens this claim by propagandizing war against Russia and encouraging attacks against Russia.

The press, according to Western discourse, would be a protector of the public interest against the discretion of those in power. That’s idle talk. The press, in fact, even private companies, are tools of these same rulers to control and oppress the governed.

A growing number of Germans oppose the shipment of weapons to Ukraine and Germany’s participation in a war against Russia, but they are systematically deceived and betrayed by their government and the mass media.

March 9, 2024 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

New NATO airbase in Albania shows its members are effectively satellite states

By Drago Bosnic | March 9, 2024

NATO is the single most dangerous threat to global security. The belligerent alliance is anything but what it claims to be. Although formed as a supposedly “defensive alliance”, NATO never actually defended anyone or anything in the 75 years of its most unfortunate existence. Quite the contrary, the belligerent alliance attacked dozens of countries, particularly in the aftermath of the (First) Cold War, with its first victim being Yugoslavia/Serbia. The political West fabricated the narrative that Serbs were allegedly “war criminals” in order to justify its direct invasion of the country it previously carved up by backing various separatist movements, particularly the narco-terrorists in Serbia’s southern province of Kosovo and Metohia, radical Islamists in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the Neo-Nazi/Ustashe regime in Croatia.

In the last over two decades, the United States made sure to “legitimize” this conquest by imposing its narrative on everyone in the region and the rest of the world. An important segment of that was pushing the newly established countries (in reality mere satellite states) into joining NATO, regardless of the will of the people. Just how “sovereign” these new entities are is perhaps best illustrated by their infinitely servile relationship with the belligerent alliance, with Albania being perhaps the most extreme example. Namely, on March 4, Tirana officially re-opened the Kucova Airbase. The site was built in the early 1950s, but was largely abandoned in the 1990s, when the Albanian Air Force effectively stopped existing after it retired all of its fixed-wing aircraft, leaving only a handful of helicopters.

Over the last several years, NATO invested in reviving this (First) Cold War relic “into a modern hub for NATO future air operations”, according to its own announcement. Kucova Airbase is located approximately 85 km south of Tirana and its new official purpose will be to serve as a logistics, air operations, training and exercises hub for the Albanian Air Force (FASh) and other NATO air forces. However, in reality, as previously mentioned, the Albanian military doesn’t really have a functioning air arm, as FASh is quite small and doesn’t really need an airbase such as the one at Kucova. On the other hand, NATO does, which is why it invested around €50 million (nearly $55 million) in the renovation and modernization of the airbase. NATO insists that it’s of strategic importance.

“The airbase will serve as an important NATO air hub,” said Acting Spokesperson Dylan White, adding: “The makeover of Kucova Airbase is a strategic investment and shows that NATO continues to strengthen its presence in the Western Balkans, an area of strategic importance to the Alliance.”

The opening ceremony certainly suggests that it’s considered extremely important, as it was attended by the Albanian President Bajram Begaj, Prime Minister Edi Rama, President of the Assembly Lindita Nikolla, Defense Minister Niko Peleshi and the Chief of Defense Major General Arben Kingji. In addition, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto, Turkish Lieutenant General Göksel Kahya and several other high-ranking officials and military officers were present and also spoke at the ceremony. NATO also sent the Commander of the Combined Air Operations Center Torrejón, Lieutenant General Juan Pablo Sanchez De Lara and the General Manager of the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA), Stacy Cummings. This suggests that the airbase will be a major logistics hub for NATO.

According to their own assessment, Kucova is the belligerent alliance’s biggest project in Albania in the last decade. Renovation work began with a ground-breaking ceremony in 2019 and includes upgrades and modernization of the control tower, runways, hangars and storage facilities. The renovation was officially funded by NATO’s Security Investment Program (NSIP), the purpose of which is to cover major construction projects in various vassals and satellite states. Albania is certainly among the least sovereign ones, as evidenced by what will effectively be full exterritoriality rights for the Kucova Airbase. As previously mentioned, FASh lacks any fixed-wing aircraft, so it doesn’t really need an airbase with modern runways, hangars, control towers and storage facilities.

This probably makes it the first such airbase in the area, suggesting that NATO is moving its major logistics hubs eastward, making it a part of the political West’s general “Drang nach Osten”. The mainstream propaganda machine is already making laughable claims that the airbase is there to “ease growing fears in the Balkans over creeping Russian influence”. Obviously, the only growing fears that the region should have is finding itself in an even firmer grip of NATO’s warmongering claws. Unfortunately, that’s precisely what’s happening now, as evidenced by the presence of USAF F-16s and F-35s. According to Defense News, the project “gained urgency as Moscow foments anti-Western sentiment in the Balkans”. Once again, such ludicrous claims are based on nothing but Neo-McCarthyism.

“This is a base that (will add) another element of security for our Western Balkans region which we all know is endangered from the threat and neo-imperialist ambitions of the Russian Federation,” Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said during the opening ceremony.

Truly horrific that “poor Albania” is jeopardized by the “big bad Russian Bear“. However, in all seriousness, Tirana should be the last to speak of someone else’s “neo-imperialist ambitions” given the fact that, with US/NATO help, it established political power and influence in at least three states and entities of former Yugoslavia ever since NATO invaded the region and sent its occupation forces. This includes Albanian elements in Montenegro, North Macedonia and the NATO-occupied Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohia. Albanian radicals usually project power through their narco-terrorist operations that are affecting not just Europe, but much of the world, which has become a major issue for the Albanian people too, as they’re leaving en masse wherever the narco-terrorists take over.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

March 9, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Peaceful times are over – Tusk

RT | March 9, 2024

The peaceful times in Europe are long gone, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said, painting a grim picture of the future of the continent amid the continuing tensions with Russia.

“The times of peace are over. The post-war era is over,” Tusk said at a meeting of the European People’s Party (EPP) in Bucharest, Romania on Thursday. “We are living through new times – the pre-war era.”

“The fight against totalitarian trends, corruption, and lies is taking place on many fronts. The most dramatic illustration of this is, of course, what is happening in the war in Ukraine,” the prime minister continued.

“We are facing a simple choice: either we fight to protect our borders, territory and values, and defend our citizens and future generations, or [accept] the alternative that is defeat.”

Tusk made his comments as the Russia-Ukraine conflict entered its third year last month, with many EU heads of state renewing their pledges to continue military and financial aid to Kiev.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in February that the US-led alliance should brace for “a confrontation that could last decades.” US President Joe Biden vowed during his State of the Union address on Thursday to continue backing Ukraine and accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of “sowing chaos around Europe and beyond.”

Moscow has blamed the West for instigating current tensions, arguing that NATO’s expansion eastward is one of the key causes of Russia’s ongoing military operation in the neighboring state. Putin stated last year that the West’s true goal is “the breakup” of Russia.

The Russian leader, however, stressed that Moscow has no intention of attacking NATO member states unless it will be attacked first.

March 9, 2024 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine does not want foreign troops and intends to fight alone, claims White House

By Ahmed Adel | March 7, 2024

According to the White House National Security Council’s strategic communications coordinator John Kirby Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky does not ask for foreign troops and wants to fight alone, an untruthful statement as the Kiev regime has sought to drag the West into war with Russia.

At a press conference at the White House on March 5, Kirby once again commented on speculation about sending Western contingents to Ukraine, ruling out such an option for the American military.

“President Zelensky isn’t asking for that, he’s just asking for the tools and capabilities. He’s never asked for foreign troops to fight for his country,” Kirby claimed.

The spokesperson also recalled that since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, President Joe Biden said he would not send American troops.

Kirby’s comments were spurred on after French President Emmanuel Macron suggested sending troops on February 26 but admitted there was no consensus. Macron faced immediate backlash from many Western allies, including the US and Germany, after he discussed the idea at a conference in Paris.

Despite the humiliation, the French president has doubled down on his idea of supporting Ukraine despite the futility of achieving victory over Russia. During a visit to Prague on February 5, he said that he “fully” stood by his comments and that a “strategic leap” was necessary.

“We are surely approaching a moment for Europe in which it will be necessary not to be cowards,” Macron said, adding after meeting with his Czech counterpart Petr Pavel: “Is this or is it not our war? Can we look away in the belief that we can let things run their course?”

The French leader said that some powers, an indirect reference to Russia, had become “unstoppable” and that “We will have to live up to history and the courage that it requires.”

Macron’s commitment to the idea is perplexing since even Washington has attempted to distance itself from his idea, while Berlin, the European Union’s other large power, has categorically ruled out sending troops to Ukraine, with Germany’s defence minister Boris Pistorius even adding that the French president’s comments were not helpful.

“We don’t need really, from my perspective at least, discussions about boots on the ground or having more courage or less courage,” Pistorius said at a press conference in Stockholm after meeting with his Swedish counterpart Pal Jonson. “This is something which does not really help solve the issues we have when it comes to helping Ukraine.”

The Russian Ministry of Defence has already reported on evidence of the direct participation of mercenaries from the United States, Canada, and European Union countries in the Ukrainian military. After the liberation of Avdeyevka, evidence emerged on the presence of such mercenaries among the Ukrainian Army.

Authorities of the countries where these fighters originate from have done little to discourage their citizens going to the war zone, and in many cases, have championed such mercenaries. Although these are obviously not official troops, it does demonstrate that Western countries would have sent troops if Russia did not have nuclear capabilities and the means to defend itself, and because of these reasons, they prefer the volunteer model, which is why many of the mercenaries are former military personnel.

Zelensky has not only refused to disavow Macron’s statements but has repeatedly called for the imposition of a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which would allow Western enforcement States’ aircraft to be present in Ukrainian airspace and employ force against Russian aircraft operating in that zone. The Ukrainian president also repeats the demand for Ukraine’s quick accession into NATO under the full understanding that the bloc’s mutual defence pact will drag the entire Western world into war with Russia.

Kirby’s claim that Zelensky does not want Western troops in Ukraine and only aid is preposterous, especially since the war-torn country is in such a precarious position that only a direct Western intervention could, maybe, turn back Russian forces from areas formerly of eastern Ukraine and Crimea. This is a reality that Macron also recognises, but his frustration is in the knowledge that France alone cannot oppose Russia, especially in the context of Germany and the USA humiliating the French president by distancing themselves from his idea.

With such an unwillingness in the West to directly intervene in Ukraine, Macron is increasingly behaving more Napoleonic. Yet, for all the bravado, there is little France can do to reverse Ukraine’s fortunes, even if Zelensky finally receives foreign ground troops.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

March 7, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Biden’s Unpopular Wars Reap Mass Death and Nuclear Brinkmanship

By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | March 7, 2024

President Joe Biden, better known as Genocide Joe, in cooperation with a perfunctory legislative branch has mired the American people in savage, reckless, costly, and unpopular wars. The White House’s catastrophic foreign policy may force American society to a breaking point.

The American public is increasingly rejecting Washington’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, which has already cost well over $100 billion, put the world on the brink of nuclear annihilation, and seen Ukrainians killed or injured by the hundreds of thousands.

As Americans are more concerned with simultaneous crises of inflation, healthcare, immigration, and crime, according to the latest Harris poll, 70% of Americans oppose Biden’s policy of unending military aid going to the Ukrainian meat grinder and instead want a diplomatic settlement.

The disconnect between those living in the country and those in Washington DC is highlighted by members of the U.S. Senate openly salivating about drawing Russian blood and funneling tens of billions of dollars into the military-industrial complex.

Arch-neocon and top State Department official Victoria Nuland is threatening Moscow that the United States will assist Ukraine to “accelerate [its] asymmetric warfare” and provide “nasty surprises on the battlefield.” At the same time, French President Emmanuel Macron says deploying NATO troops to Ukraine to fight Russia should not be off the table.

Subsequent to a meeting with other leaders in Europe concerning the effort to weaken Russia with the Ukrainian battering ram, Macron declared, “There’s no consensus today to send in an official, endorsed manner troops on the ground. But in terms of dynamics, nothing can be ruled out.”

In response to Macron’s bluster, Russian President Vladimir Putin proclaimed in a speech to the Federal Assembly “[our] strategic nuclear forces are on full combat alert, and the ability to use them is assured.” The Russian leader continued, “Now they have started talking about the possibility of deploying NATO military contingents to Ukraine…They must grasp that we also have weapons—yes, they know this, as I have just said—capable of striking targets on their territory.”

Concurrently, the head of the German Air Force has been caught on a leaked tape discussing with his officers plans to provide Taurus missiles to Kiev, weapons which have a range of roughly 300 miles, in hopes of carrying out attacks against Russia. London confirmed last week that “a small number” of British troops are on the ground “supporting the armed forces of Ukraine.”

On numerous occasions last year, neo-Nazis armed with NATO weaponry and ties to Ukrainian military intelligence attacked civilian areas across the border in Russia. Using Western intelligence, Kiev has already waged drone warfare deep inside Russia.

Despite Putin’s ominous remarks and the sentiments of the American people, NATO is launching massive war games, including on Russia’s borders, in preparation for war with Moscow. As the Libertarian Institute’s News Editor Kyle Anzalone reports, “[These] latest drills are a part of NATO’s Steadfast Defender military exercises—the bloc’s largest series of war games, which will see over 90,000 troops participate in about a dozen maneuvers from January through August.”

Biden’s unpopular war with Russia has brought humanity closer to a nuclear holocaust than ever before. But perhaps more widely despised and devastating to the American soul is the genocidal campaign unleashed by Israel against the Palestinian Muslims and Christians inhabiting the besieged Gaza Strip.

Per a recent Data For Progress poll, two-thirds of the American population oppose the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Israel and instead want the White House to back a permanent ceasefire. 77% of Democrats, 69% of Independents, and a staggering 56% of Republicans agree regarding this issue.

However, Israel’s globally livestreamed mass killing spree—primarily against women and children—is fully supported by the White House. The same government which practically every member of America’s political class swears is “our greatest ally” has cut Gaza off from food, water, fuel, and electricity. Israel is destroying Gaza, making it uninhabitable by bombing cities, neighborhoods, apartments, homes, schools, universities, hospitals, ambulances, UN shelters, mosques, churches, greenhouses, orchards, and refugee camps.

So far, the Israeli apartheid army has butchered over 30,000 people, including more than 12,000 children. Unfortunately, these confirmed figures paint a picture less macabre than reality, as thousands of men, women, and children are buried beneath rubble and presumed dead. One can only imagine what the final death toll and excess death rate will be.

Often using dystopian AI programs to select targets, the United States and Israel have leveled a greater percentage of infrastructure in Gaza than the Allied bombings in Dresden during World War II. The Guardian recently reported, “As of 17 January, analysis of satellite data by Corey Scher of the City University of New York and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University reveals that between 50% and 62% of all buildings in Gaza have likely been damaged or destroyed.”

Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, approximately half of which are children, have been bombed everywhere. At times, this has included 2,000-pound bombs raining down on the Israeli-designated safe zones. Virtually every city in Gaza has been eradicated except Rafah, where 1.5 million refugees have fled to and which the Israeli war cabinet plans to hit with a blitzkrieg this month.

Social media feeds in every American household have been flooded with graphic videos and images showing countless Palestinian babies, children, women, elderly people, and men being blown to bits, killed, shot, mutilated, or permanently disfigured with our weaponry.

Last week, in what is known now as the “Flour Massacre,” the Israeli occupation opened fire killing over a hundred Palestinians and injuring hundreds more near Gaza City as they desperately attempted to obtain what they could from a trickle of aid that was allowed into the Strip.

Biden, previously known as “Israel’s man in Washington,” is fond of reciting his assertion that “If Israel didn’t exist, [the United States] would have to invent it.” But each day, new horrors and atrocities are unearthed, revealing Israel to be nothing more than a rogue state (incidentally armed with dozens, if not hundreds, of nuclear weapons).

Caitlin Johnstone perfectly sums up the reaction of normal people with a conscience to the unending stream of Israeli barbarism reported daily:

So it turns out the IDF has been running a Telegram channel featuring homemade snuff films in which Gazans are brutally murdered by Israeli forces, captioned with celebrations of the gore and pain therein like “Burning their mother… You won’t believe the video we got! You can hear their bones crunch.” The IDF had previously denied any association with the channel, but Haaretz now reports that it was directly run by an IDF psychological warfare unit.

This is one of those many, many times where Israel is so awful that at first you’re not sure what you’re looking at. You think you must be misreading the report. Then you read it again and go “Oh wow, that’s SO much worse than I would have guessed.”

However bad you think Israel is, you can always be sure that information will come out later that proves it’s even worse.

Palestinians are being subjected to inhumane torture as well. After The New York Times analyzed a report from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the paper reported, “Detainees said they were beaten, stripped, robbed, blindfolded, sexually abused, and denied access to lawyers and doctors, often for more than a month.”

The Times article continues, “Some detainees, according to the report, told UNRWA investigators that they had often been beaten on open wounds, had been held for hours in painful stress positions, and had been attacked by military dogs.”

One prisoner was “beaten so badly that his genitals turned blue and that there was still blood present in his urine… guards made him sleep naked in the open air, next to a fan blowing cold air, and played music so loudly that his ear bled.”

This coincides with numerous Israeli media reports of torture inflicted against the occupied Palestinians at the hands of their Zionist army captors. In January, +972 Magazine reported on the hellish scenes inside Israeli detention centers holding untold numbers of civilians rounded up in Gaza:

“Israeli soldiers subjected Palestinian detainees to electric shocks, burned their skin with lighters, spat in their mouths, and deprived them of sleep, food, and access to bathrooms until they defecated on themselves. Many were tied to a fence for hours, handcuffed, and blindfolded for most of the day… Several people are known to have died as a result of being held in these conditions.”

Israel has the population of Gaza trapped in an open-air concentration camp, with 75% of Palestinians crammed into a single city. More than 90% of the Palestinians living in the Strip have been internally displaced amidst the Israeli onslaught.

Tens of thousands of bombs have been dropped in Gaza, as the United States has delivered Israel some 25,000 tons of weapons including thousands of 2,000 pound bombs and tens of thousands of artillery shells.

It is a repudiation of every treasured American value for our government to make all of us a party to such atrocities under any conditions.

The whole world sees this for what it is. Half of Americans who voted for Biden in 2020 believe he is complicit in genocide. Indeed, the International Court of Justice has issued a preliminary ruling that Israel’s actions may plausibly constitute genocide. Nevertheless, our Congress is committed to financing this systematic destruction of Gaza with another $14 billion of the American people’s hard-earned money.

Palestinians are not only being ripped apart with American bombs and shells, they are being starved to death by the hundreds of thousands. As Antiwar.com News Editor Dave DeCamp reports:

At least 16 Palestinian children have starved to death in the Gaza Strip over the past few days due to the US-backed Israeli siege, and the UN’s child relief agency is warning that the number of child deaths will “rapidly increase” if conditions don’t immediately change.

“Last week, we warned that an explosion in child deaths was imminent if the burgeoning nutrition crisis wasn’t resolved,” said Adele Khodr, UNICEF’s director for the Middle East and North Africa. “Now, the child deaths we feared are here and are likely to rapidly increase unless the war ends and obstacles to humanitarian relief are immediately resolved.”

The latest Palestinian child reported to die of hunger was Yazan al-Kafarna, a 10-year-old with cerebral palsy who was in the al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah. Fifteen children have also died of malnutrition and dehydration at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza.

The UN has previously warned that Gaza’s entire population of about 2.2 million people is facing “crisis” levels of food insecurity, and at least 576,000 Palestinians in Gaza are “facing catastrophic levels of deprivation and starvation.”

Despite the dire situation, the State Department reaffirmed on Monday that it will continue to provide military assistance for Israel’s genocidal war.

The last vestiges of our deluded American exceptionalism burned up in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C. with Aaron Bushnell last month. As the former member of the U.S. Air Force stated before his self-immolation in protest of the genocide in Gaza, “this is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

But regardless of what excuses White House spokespeople are able to conjure up in an attempt to hide the blood on their hands, this is not normal and the American people will never accept it. As evidenced by the public opinion polls and protest movements across the country, Biden will pay dearly in the coming election for his role in the mass murder ongoing in Palestine.

NBC News revealed the Biden reelection team has taken “extraordinary steps” to avoid antiwar protesters including “by making [their events] smaller, withholding their precise locations from the media and the public until he arrives, and avoiding college campuses.”

Additionally, the more than 100,000 “uncommitted” protest votes in the Michigan Democratic primary last week foreshadows things to come for Genocide Joe and the Democratic Party establishment. Demonstrators camped out daily in front of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s residence chant “Blinken! Blinken! We see you and all the war crimes that you do!”

In his last words, Bushnell said he could “no longer be complicit in genocide.” His message was one that resonates with perhaps a majority of Americans. But in Washington, his message could not be more alien.

Americans have witnessed the true nature of the U.S. empire, its allies, partners, and proxies. They have voiced their abhorrence to their government and have been shocked at the abject lack of empathy for the Palestinian women and children being slaughtered, tortured, and deprived to death on an industrial scale.

In a video last month, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) was told by a peace activist on Capitol Hill, “I’ve seen the footage of shredded children’s bodies. That’s my taxpayer dollars that are going to bomb those kids.” Ogles responded proudly, “I think we should kill ’em all, if that makes you feel better.”

An American antiwar populace cannot be ruled by unrepentant and unAmerican warmongers in perpetuity; a breaking point cannot come soon enough.

March 7, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

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